Full Circle on the Mountain

By Linda Gardner

Do you believe a personal destiny exists for each of us? If it were possible to catch a glimpse of that destiny, would you have the courage, faith and strength of heart to follow it? What would be the cost, and what would have to be lain on the altar of sacrifice?

FULL CIRCLE on the MOUNTAIN answers those questions with a powerful and insightful journey into one womans personal destiny.

Claudette Elizabeth McAllister grew up a young woman, in rural South Carolina in the fifties, the daughter of a farmer and his bakery shop attendant wife. She was an ordinary girl, with ordinary dreams of going to college and pursuing a career in accounting. Destiny, however, used those dreams to choose another path for her.

A presumed "chance meeting" with handsome, educated, and wealthy, Johnny Richardson would change her life and set her on a course with destiny which would not rest until she came full circle with it some twenty years later.

In the early sixties, fate, in disguise as a life-threatening experience drives her back to her hometown. There she must face the reality of a son born out of wedlock, the tragic accident that killed her best friend and the realization that her life was somehow being orchestrated by forces beyond her control. Forces that continually required her to sacrifice and endure what seemed impossible for the human spirit.

FULL CIRCLE on the MOUNTAIN is a journey along her path of people, places and events which would not only direct and shape her destiny, but weave its threads deeply into an entire family, unaware they too were a part of the great tapestry of this simple woman.

" A rare and powerful combination of: entertainment, insight, wisdom and truth." Henri Forget, free-lance editor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 1, 2002
• ISBN: 9780759665569

Linda Gardner

Linda Gardner is an avid seeker of truth and divine destiny. She believes that people, places, events and circumstances; whether they are joyous or tragic experiences come into our lives for a divine reason. Each experience is a road sign to a greater destiny and unique calling. Her quest in seeking her personal destiny began to unfold as she wrote her first novel, Full Circle on the Mountain. She began to write short stories, poems and prose at the age of twelve, dreaming of writing a novel some day, but put aside her passion for writing to marry, raise a family and pursue a career. Many years, two grown children and two grandchildren later that passion for writing began to tug at her heart once more and in April of 1998, she acknowledged that call. Like her character in Full Circle, she too was being called back to a destiny she had walked away from. She is currently working on an autobiography, titled: Breathing in the Spirit: Exhaling All of Creation. This will be a documented journey of visions, revelations, teachings and insights into her personal destiny and her awareness of our connection to all of creation. Linda, a native of North Carolina currently resides in Wesley Chapel, Florida with her husband Ron, and faithful Chow, Onyx. She is a member of LifeLong Writers, a membership arm of the Florida Center for Writers at the University of South Florida, and a member of the International Women’s Writing Guild.

Book preview

Full Circle on the Mountain

By

Linda Gardner

© 2001 by Linda Gardner. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

ISBN: 0-7596-6557-5

ISBN: 978-0-7596-6556-9 (ebk)

IstBooks-rev. 04/11/02

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

EPILOGUE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

This book is dedicated to one old friend and one new friend.

To Randy, for all the love and belief you’ve had in me for so many years and across so many miles, and for keeping the eternal flame burning.

To Debbie, for all the encouragement, enthusiasm, and convincing me that this was not my last chance, but my first opportunity.

THANKS FOR THE FAITH

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to thank my husband, Ron for twenty-six months of enduring the book. And giving me the space and time to birth my creativity. I love you Bear. Many thanks go to Barbara Stock for the untold hours of word processing and typing the manuscript, while sometimes in physical pain. I raise a glass of champagne to you my dear and you will know why. My deepest appreciation goes to Darilyn Alderman for her unselfish and generous contribution in helping to make my dream a reality. I wish to thank Tom Overbey; friend, neighbor and owner of Sprint Multimedia, Inc. and Joe Hagen, his graphic designer for capturing the essence of my novel for the cover. I would like to acknowledge my family and many friends, who saw me very little over the past few years because of my commitment to this endeavor…and I want to thank them for their support and caring. Many thanks go to IstBooks for giving me the opportunity to express my creativity, my way. A special thank you to Cynthia Bright, Bright Mountain Books, Asheville, North Carolina for: James Mooney’s: History, Myths and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees, (1891) as published by the Bureau of American Ethnology. Excerpt from: Concerning Living Humanity (love.)

You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round…

The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours…

Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.

Black Elk (1863-1950)

Oglala Sioux Holy Man

ONE

It was a typical hot and sultry August night in Mobile. As I fumbled for my keys, I felt a chill come over me. I had felt those chills before and they had forewarned me that something terrible was about to happen. Maybe something had happened to William Lawrence and Caroline had not called me at work. Finally, finding my keys, I unlocked the door to my apartment. I saw Caroline sitting on the sofa, engrossed in a book.

Oh! Hey Claudette, I was so interested in this here book that I didn’t hear you. Let me help you with those grocery bags now.

Is everything all right, Caroline?

Oh sure, everything is fine. I plum wore little William out at the park this afternoon. I fixed his supper early. He ate all his vegetables, too. Gave him his bath and put him to bed about an hour ago.

Thanks Caroline. I don’t know what I would do without you to help me out. Remember, I will need you for a few hours in the morning. Can you be here by nine o’clock? June and Mavis have a wedding party coming in: the bride, her mother and five bridesmaids. I need to help out at the shop. These appointments always seem to get so emotional. Last time we had a wedding party in, the bride cried all morning, the mother passed out and the two sisters fought like cats and dogs. It was a disaster!

Yes, ma’am. I can be here about eight thirty or so.

Thanks, Caroline. I will pay you now for this weeks sitting plus tomorrow. I should be back by one o’clock.

Caroline was a godsend. A high school dropout, but she loved children and had a certain way with them. William Lawrence adored her. I had often tried to encourage her to attain her high school diploma and to try to get a teacher’s aide job, but when it came to her studies, she was lazy and it went in one ear and out the other. I was happy and very fortunate to have her to take care of William Lawrence.

It was the end of the month and time to pay some bills. That’s what I had planned for the evening: have some supper, pay bills and then take a long, cool bath. Caroline had thawed out some leftover beef stew for me so that I would not have to cook. She was always so thoughtful that way. I poured myself a glass of iced tea and started to warm up the stew in a pot. Suddenly, that chill came over me again. Better check on William Lawrence, I thought. He was fine, sleeping like the little lamb that he was. Maybe I was just coming down with one of those summer colds. I hoped not. Those are the worst. Now the stew was hot and I ate it while I sorted out my bills on the dining room table. Each month when I paid the bills, I liked to pay my rent first. I would put it in an envelope and slide it under Carl’s door. Usually, I did this before he got home and it worked out just fine, but June had scheduled a late appointment, some big society affair, and I had gotten home later than usual. I would do almost anything to avoid Carl DeLamotte’s presence, but he was my landlord and I knew he would be at my door any minute to collect his rent money.

After my best friend, Marianne, was killed in the car accident, I could no longer stay at her house. Her parents sold it to a young couple, just newly married. One of the beauty shop patrons told me about Carl and the fact that he had inherited a large house on Elm Street. He was in the process of converting the three upstairs bedrooms into small efficiency apartments. I needed to put a roof over me and William Lawrence so I made an inquiry and found out that I could rent one of the apartments inexpensively. They were furnished and that would help out too, as I really didn’t have much to my name at the time. Some of the folks had warned me about Carl. They said he was the town drunk and most times didn’t act like he had both oars in the water. They told me also he was a nice enough guy when he was sober, but don’t turn your back on him when he is drunk. Most of the stories I had heard about him happened before I moved in. They said the local police frequented his home quite a bit, especially on the weekends. His being drunk and disorderly, playing loud music and causing domestic disturbances were the reasons for their calls.

Although Carl was not married, I had been told by the shop patron that he had a string of women over the years and that he had been shacking up with some of them. Loud yelling, screaming and glass breaking kept the police busy most weekends at his place. I was also told that he had cut a man up pretty bad in a barroom fight in Louisiana and he served some time in jail. I knew that he carried a knife because I saw it once. He was sitting on the porch one day when I came home and I saw it strapped to his boot.

Carl loved to boast that he had once been a riverboat captain. I suspect that it would have been more accurate to say he had been a riverboat rat, vermin that he was. He was a wiry little man, usually supporting two or three days of facial stubble, had yellow teeth from smoking Camels and a distinct odor about him that indicated that he didn’t bathe on a regular basis. Although the sight and smell of him made my skin crawl, his place was clean. He had a black woman named Belle coming in three times a week to cook and clean for him. Maid service was not extended to the upstairs so I had to do my own cleaning; if I had the energy, it got done.

I agreed to take one of the apartments because I was told that Carl had turned over a new leaf recently. They said he had met a woman in Montgomery and she had straightened him out a bit.

I remember well the day that I came to look at the apartment. Carl had rented out the other two apartments and he was anxious to get the last one rented. I think that he sensed my apprehension because after a while he said, Look here, girlie…I knows you probably heard some talk and stuff goin’ ‘round ‘bout me, ‘bout my drinkin’ and such, but old Carl done turned over a new leaf. I found me a good woman and now I’m gonna start livin’ my life on the straight and narrow for a change. He seemed sincere enough and I knew that I would soon start to wear out my welcome at June and Roger’s house, so I decided to rent the apartment.

Louise, Carl’s new girlfriend, was to move in with him the same weekend that I was to move in. Shacking up or not, I was glad that Carl had a new girlfriend to keep him occupied. That would let me rest easier at night because I couldn’t help but remember all those stories that I heard.

I’ll never forget the Saturday that June drove me, William Lawrence and all my earthly possessions over to my new apartment. Carl was standing on the front porch grinnin’ from ear to ear. He looked like he had been spit shined from head to toe.

Good Lord, June said, Is that Carl DeLamotte? Must be, can’t be nobody else. I ain’t never seen that man so clean.

Well, Claudette, I hope this Louise woman shows up before I have to leave ‘cause I wanna get a look at the woman who did this to him. I thought all the miracles were happenin’ over to the Holiness tent revival. June was serious with her comment, but she made me laugh anyway. In fact, we both had a good laugh.

After about three months, Louise and Carl had a big fight, probably over another woman. She packed all her belongings and moved back to Montgomery. Carl went downhill right away, back to the old Carl: drinking, dirty, unshaven and raising hell ‘til all hours of the night.

On several occasions the police were outside and I could hear them warning Carl. I tried once, and only once, to talk to Carl about his apparent broken heart, but he told me it weren’t none of my damn business and he didn’t need that white-trash bitch anyway. I never spoke to him again about it. Carl just got worse and as the weeks passed I began to feel fearful for my life, not to mention my baby William Lawrence. I knew that this was not a place that I wanted to raise my son.

I had been successful in slipping the rent money under Carl’s door for the past couple of months. He had made it a point to collect it himself when Louise was with him. I did not think too much about it, but since Louise had left him and he had gone back to being his old self, I was no longer comfortable with this arrangement. The third month after Louise left, Carl showed up at my door drunk as a skunk. He had apparently been drinking all day and of course, acting the way a man does when whiskey is his lover. He pushed his way into my apartment and I felt that something evil was in him. He finally left, and boy was I glad!

I had arrived home later than usual that night and I knew as sure as the sun shines, that Carl would be knocking at my door at any minute. I poured myself a glass of iced tea, took another peek at William Lawrence to see if he was ok and settled down with my checkbook at the kitchen table. I had already put the rent money in an envelope and was about to write a check for the water and light bills when I heard the knock at the door.

You in there, girlie?

Carl called every woman girlie. I think it was his way, in his mind, to keep women beneath him, to lord his maleness over them.

Yes, Carl, just a minute. I picked up the envelope and headed for the door.

Come on, girlie, I come for my rent and I ain’t got all night, you know.

I had every intention of opening the door a little and handing Carl his money and closing the door as fast as possible. As soon as I opened the door, Carl put his foot in it. He reeked of whiskey, smelled as if he hadn’t bathed in three days. It turned my stomach. Before I could hand him the money, he pushed the door hard and almost knocked me down.

Damn, Claudette, I ain’t gonna hurt you or nothin’. This is my house and I can come in if I damn well please.

He was in! He slammed the door behind him.

You got my rent money?

Yes, Carl, I was about to take it down to you. I got home late today. I handed him the money and he put it in his shirt pocket.

Your boy asleep?

Yes, Carl, Caroline got him down a few hours ago.

That’s good, he’s a fine boy, he is.

Carl stood there gawking at me for what seemed like an eternity.

Is there something else you wanted, Carl?

Yes, girlie, yes there is. Since your boy’s asleep and all, I though you might like to join old Carl for a little drink.

I was totally taken by surprise. No, Carl, I’ve had a long day, I’m tired, gotta finish paying these bills and I’ve got to go into the shop for a while in the morning. I need some rest. Besides Carl, I think you have had enough to drink for one day. Why don’t you go back downstairs and sleep it off.

Oh come on, girlie, just one drink. You might get to like old Carl if you give him a chance.

No, Carl! And that’s it! I said no! He began to stagger toward me.

Well, seein’ how you had such a hard day, maybe old Carl can do somethin’ for you that’ll make you feel real good.

With that, he reached and touched my left breast. The stench from the whiskey and his body odor made my head reel and my stomach turn. I felt sick and scared. In an instant and without thinking I took both hands and pushed him away as hard as I could.

Get the hell out of here, Carl, I shouted.

He was not prepared for my attack and in his drunken stupor, fell backward on the living room floor hitting his head on the coffee table. He was so pickled in his whiskey that he didn’t even feel it and bounced back up like some demon that had been resurrected from hell.

I’ll never forget the look on his face; his eyes were red and burning like hot coals. Suddenly, he seemed to transform himself into something unnatural, some demonic animal bent on tearing me limb from limb.

You little white-trash bitch! You’ve gone and done it now. He lunged at me, but missed.

Stop it, Carl! Stop it! I’m going call the police if you don’t get outta here now!

Don’t you know, girlie, that I’ve had my eye on you since the day you got here? Ain’t no reason we cain’t become better acquainted, if you know what I mean. Maybe old Carl can reduce your rent a bit each month. How ‘bout it?

I couldn’t believe my ears; Carl was proposing to reduce my rent if I shacked up with him once in awhile. That bastard! If I had had a gun, I would have killed him right there, but, I didn’t have a gun and there was only one way out of the apartment, through the front door and Carl was blocking it. If I could just get to the kitchen, get a knife or a cast-iron skillet, I might have a chance, but the kitchen was next to the front door and Carl was blocking that, too. I remembered the knife that he kept strapped to his boot, but that would be too risky. He could trap me in the kitchen and pull it on me and I knew that he would. The only other place to run was the bedroom and then what? Jump from a three-storied house window? The bedroom seemed to be my only chance. I could lock the door and find something to defend myself with or I could yell for help out of the window. What good would that do? The whole neighborhood was used to hearing yelling and screaming coming from this house. No one would pay much attention. Only when they had had enough with the racket would they call the police. As it was my only possible choice, I made a mad dash for the bedroom and slammed the door, locking it just in time.

Come on, girlie, ain’t no use to fight it. Old Carl done made up his mind, and he’s gonna git it one way or the other. Come on now, open up this here door before I have to break it down.

If only the other two tenants were around, maybe they could have heard my call for help. Mr. James, a single schoolteacher, was still in Detroit visiting with his brother for the summer and would not be back until next weekend. Janie, a widow in her late fifties, was visiting with her daughter and grandchildren for two weeks. I searched frantically for something to defend myself with. A pair of scissors or something sharp would do, but in my quest to be a good mother, I had put them in a sewing basket and put it on a top shelf in the closet in the kitchen away from the reach of children’s small hands.

I began to hear the soft cries and whimpers of William Lawrence. He was awakened by all the commotion going on. William Lawrence occupied a small bedroom that was divided from mine only by the bathroom. No way out in there either and I wasn’t going to lead Carl in there. God, no! Not in there.

Suddenly I remembered something my mama once told me. If you ever get into trouble, the quickest way to get help is to yell fire, fire! Well, mama wasn’t wrong ‘cause I was just about to be engulfed in hell’s fire with the devil himself. I ran to the window that overlooked the street. I didn’t see any neighbors outside or sitting on their porches, but lights were on in the houses that I could see. I started to scream at the top of my lungs, Fire, fire! Carl had been beating the door with his fist and kicking it with his boots, spouting off cuss words even I had never heard. He flung the door open. Why I do not know, but I leaped on top of the bed. Silly of me to think I could get away from him up there. My God, this man intended to rape and maybe kill me I thought, but it ended up saving my life.

I’m gonna git you now, girlie was all he said, moving slowly toward the end of the bed. Carl had become like a wild, wounded beast. His only focus was on me, his prey. I just kept screaming at him to get away from me and that the police were gonna be here any minute, but he didn’t or wouldn’t hear me. He was transfixed on the kill. Just before he reached the end of the bed, he pulled the knife from his boot. The room was dark, but it was a moonlit night and I could see its silvery flash. My heart stopped! He’s gonna kill me, I thought! I must have looked like a scared rabbit caught in a snare to him, because he laughed. Bouncing around on the bed to avoid his lunges at me almost made me lose my balance several times. Over the bed hung a picture, a mountain scene and on either side of that were two gold painted cherubs. I took one of the cherubs off the wall and threw it at him.

Missed, he said, laughing and rolling his eyes. I grabbed for the other one almost losing my balance and threw it at him, missing him again. By that time he had both hands and one knee up on the bed. He moved slowly like a cat enjoying each moment before the kill. My only hope was the picture. I waited until he was all the way on the bed, then I grabbed the picture and thrust it down on his head as hard as I could. The force with which I hit him caused me to lose my balance and fall off the bed. Startled by my fall, I quickly sat up. The moon had cast its light on the bed and I could see Carl quite clearly now. The force with which I had hit him had driven the picture down to his elbows. He was stuck! I began to see little spurts of blood forming on his head, face and neck. The glass from the picture had cut him.

You damn white-trash bitch. I, for sure, am gonna kill you now.

I leaped to my feet and ran for the bedroom door. I stopped for a moment to see Carl struggling to get free from the picture frame. William Lawrence was screaming bloody murder from his crib by this time. If I went for him, Carl might get loose and trap us both in that back bedroom. I had to run for help. As I ran through the living room and toward the front door, I hear the sound of police sirens and a fire truck, too. Mama’s idea had worked and I was alive! Missing every other step down the stairs, I burst through the front door screaming, My baby is in there with him. The lawn was covered with neighbors. The police and fire chiefs were rushing to my aid.

Apartment three, I said, Top of the stairs. Hurry! Miss Sally Jenkins, my neighbor across the street, was the first one to me. That burly old woman held on to me like my life and hers depended on it. She kept saying over and over to me, Hush now, Miss Claudette. They gonna git little William outta there. He’ll be just fine, wait and see.

In a few minutes, two policemen emerged from the house, dragging Carl, now handcuffed, with them. He was so drunk and exhausted he was unable to stand. Soon after, the fire chief deposited William Lawrence in my arms, along with his favorite teddy bear. At that moment, I totally broke down, collapsing on the lawn with my baby in my arms.

In lieu of the numerous calls and complaints about Carl over the years, along with his having already served jail time for cutting up that man in the bar, the judge threw the book at him. He was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for attempted murder.

He confessed to attempting to rape me, but always held that he would never have killed me or William Lawrence. He said that he had become confused after getting untangled from the picture frame and ran through the wrong door into the baby’s room. He said he tripped on some toys on the floor, fell and hit his head. He still had the knife in his hand when the police arrested him.

Somehow, with all that happened, I believed his story. It had all been too much for me. Marianne’s tragic death, for which I still grieved every day of my life, and now some wild crazy man, with notions that I will never understand, had tried to kill me because I would not have sex with him. I suffered a minor nervous breakdown and spent two weeks in the hospital.

A year and a half after Carl DeLamotte was sent to prison he was stabbed to death by his cellmate. They had gotten into an argument over a woman. My mama used to quote the Good Book and say, If you live by the sword, you shall die by the sword. This was certainly true in Carl’s case.

Claudette, Claudette! I’m going to turn the tape off now. Claudette, do you hear me?

Oh yes, dear. I’m sorry, it’s been a long time since I thought about that incident. I haven’t ever told it word for word like that. I had somehow transported myself back in time and I was living it all over again. It still frightens me to this day.

Yes, Claudette, I know; I was living it, too. Let’s go in the kitchen; Hannah probably has lunch almost ready. Besides you look a little pale and you need a break. We can start after lunch if you feel up to it. I’m curious, however, as to why you would want to start there with your story?

Well, I felt it was important to start with the incident with Carl because it was at that point in my life that I began to feel that I had some strange destiny. I began to feel that people, places and events were somehow pushing me in a direction I did not understand. I had a lot of time to sort through my mind those two weeks that I was in the hospital. I felt I had no power over my life. I began to have dreams and visions about my future and sensed there was someplace I was supposed to be and certain people I was supposed to be with, but I didn’t know these people or places or how to get there. I felt constantly swept along by some force or power beyond my control. The worst part was that I could see that wherever I was going, that it seemed to be at the expense of those around me. That was hard for me to realize or accept. At the time, I understood nothing about life, destiny or my purpose for living. Without Marianne’s death, I would never have moved into Carl’s place and without Carl having tried to kill me, I may have never left Mobile. Do you see what I mean? You and I would not be sitting here today having this conversation unless certain events in my life had not brought me here. I will explain more as we go along. You’ll understand. It was hard in those days to try to explain what was happening in my head. Somebody would have tried to lock me up in the nut house for sure. I knew that someday I would come face to face with my own destiny. I did not know where, when or how. I just knew it. What I did not know was that nothing I could have said or done could have prepared me for it.

TWO

Tape’s ready, Claudette. Here, let me pour you another glass of mint tea. I want you to take me back now to your early girlhood, growing up with Marianne on the farm. Tell me about your daddy and mama and about her death. I want to know the course of events that led up to your chance meeting with Johnny, how you met him, all about your brief relationship and how you got to Mobile. Tell me about life with your best and dearest friend. By that time we should be back to Carl DeLamotte.

You want me to tell you all that in one afternoon, dear?

No, Claudette, of course not. I’ve got four days before I have to be back in New York. Don’t leave anything out, ok?

I promise not to leave anything out, dear. I’m not sure I can review my whole life in four days, but I’ll try.

Well, I was born Claudette Elizabeth McAllister on March 9, 1940, the only child of Richard Lawrence and Madeline Rose DuBonet McAllister. My father was of Scottish descent like so many people from North and South Carolina. He was a farmer, a hard-working man. He grew everything from tobacco to fruits and vegetables and we had some cattle, a few pigs and chickens. You know, the sort of things you would normally find on a farm. Our farm was about twelve miles outside of Greenville, South Carolina. My daddy had tenant help on the farm and he managed to provide a pretty stable income for us. Some years were harder than others. That’s life on the farm…good years and bad years. My mama ran the local bakery in town and also catered weddings and afternoon social teas for the society ladies in Greenville. Mama was from Louisiana; part French, but mostly Creek Indian. She was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen: coal black hair, huge brown eyes and velvet skin, the color of coffee with a little cream. As a young woman mama had studied with some of the finest pastry chefs in New Orleans. She once had a promising career as a pastry chef herself. She was known far and wide for her pastry creations. Although collard greens, black-eyed peas, white side meat and cornbread were usually staples at our table, we always had the most elegant desserts. They always seemed a little out of place to me, but delicious just the same.

Daddy had met mama when he had made a trip there to buy some cattle. They fell in love as people do and mama gave up her career to come to South Carolina to be daddy’s wife. She got a job at Rayborn’s Bakery soon after they were married and I guess it didn’t take long before the whole county, and those surrounding it, discovered Madeline Rose DuBonet McAllister’s culinary creations to seduce the palate, as she would often call them. I did not inherit my mama’s love for cooking, although I helped out a lot. I was never really at home in the kitchen. Odd, for a southern girl, don’t you think? To this day I still have all eighty-three of my mama’s recipes. I should consider publishing a cookbook, I suppose.

As I said, I was an only child and always an above-average student. I loved school and didn’t mind my studies. I always loved to learn something new. I sang in the school chorus, was class president and voted most likely to succeed my senior year in high school. All in all, my life was pretty normal. I was, I guess you could say, popular, but I was never very interested in boys. However, there was one talent I had that perplexed my mama and daddy. I was good with numbers. While all the other girls were learning to cook and sew in home economics class and were concerned with boys and what they would wear to the next school dance, I was running profit and loss sheets for the farm. Balance sheets, daily ledgers, feed and seed expenditures and so on and so forth. Those were the things that interested me the most. I nearly drove daddy crazy with all this, but at the end of the month he would always say, ‘Damn, Claudette, you’re exactly right.’ He worried about me so and would say, ‘Claudette, why do you fret yourself with all this, you should be in the kitchen learnin’ to bake like your mama or shouldn’t you be sewin’ a new dress for that school dance?’ ‘No, daddy,’ I would say. ‘I just hate bakin’ and sewin’. ‘This is what I like to do.’ Then that would be the end of it because I was daddy’s little girl. I didn’t know at the time that my love of numbers and calculating, or accounting as it was called, would lead me to my destiny someday.

Life was good, as good as it gets growing up on the farm, and I had planned to attend a secretarial school when I graduated from high school. That seemed like a good place to start. I knew that going to college right away would be an expense that would be hard on mama and daddy so I planned to get some kind of training and then work for a while. I could save a lot of money to pay my tuition because I would be living at home. There were not very many women in 1958 who went to college and certainly not many who had lofty ideas about getting a degree in accounting. Accounting was very much a man’s world in those days. My mama used to say that I was twenty years ahead of my time, and she was right.

In January of my junior year in high school, my life was completely shattered. Mama discovered she had cancer. Mama always smoked, but no one at that time really knew the effects cigarettes had. I remember sometimes I would find cigarette ashes in my food. Mama would smoke while she cooked…I never dared say anything about it. Lung cancer, they said and didn’t give her much time to live; less than a year. I remember the summer before that she was coughing a lot. She said it was her allergies, but by late fall she was coughing up blood. Daddy was devastated and I was horrified by the whole ordeal. She was such a strong woman, always holding everything together and she continued to do so right up to the end. Mama quit her job in February and spent the next five months in a cancer ward at Memorial Hospital in Columbia. They did all they could for her and after a while she refused any more treatments. She said that the cure was worse than the disease. She just wanted to come home and die. It took all the strength that I could muster that August and part of September, before school started to figure out the best way to care for the needs of a person who was dying. Just moving her frail body to change the sheets from day to day was a major chore. We had a good year the year before mama got sick and they put a lot of money in the bank. Daddy said it was to help with my education, but most of that got used up when mama was in the hospital. Fortunately, we were able to pay Lola to come in and help us out with mama until she died.

Lola was a retired nurse’s aide and the wife of Rufus, who was my daddy’s hired hand on the farm. They were tenants and lived on about three acres of our land. They were like family and Lola’s nursing background was a godsend for us. I spent most of my time, when not in school, seeing to mama’s needs. It took all three of us to look after her. Daddy became distant and cold, immersing himself in the day-to-day duties of running a farm. As for me, I didn’t have any place to run or hide and watching mama disintegrate like rotting fruit was something I hoped I would never have to do in my lifetime again. Mama passed on the first week in November…just nine months after she had been diagnosed with cancer. For me, it felt like nine years. Little did I know at the time that mama’s death would be only one of the many tragedies in my life. Each one would be like a steppingstone, leading me to this front porch, sitting in this old Victorian rocker and having this conversation with you. Destiny is a strange friend.

Goodness knows why in the world you would think my life would be interesting enough to write a book about. The only difference I suppose between my life and someone else’s life is maybe I just have a special ability to understand my destiny because it is my own. I saw it and understood it; bittersweet as it was, I embraced it.

My point exactly, Claudette. You are just like everyone else, but your courage, your day-to-day, living-life-as-best-you-can-in-this-world courage comes from somewhere else. Certainly not from your experience on a battlefield or the fact that you have overcome horrible afflictions, but from the tragedies in your life, real life, everyday life that we all struggle with. Most importantly, your love for another human being against all odds. The denial, the sacrifice for other people’s happiness, unaware of your suffering and pain. We are all silent hero’s to some degree in this world, Claudette. There is not one among us who has not suffered at the hand of fate somehow or somewhere and survived. We all have a victory song to sing. I just want the opportunity to write yours. Now, go on with your story.

Ok, dear. As you know, every teenager looks forward to their senior year in high school. It’s sort of a rite of passage. My excitement about my senior year was buried with mama in her casket. While it was a most difficult year for me, daddy took it the hardest. I could tell by the look on his face each day that he may not recover from this. I used to hear him crying on the front porch at night sometimes. He would sit in that porch swing and rock and cry…rock and cry. I could remember many a night while I was growing up hearing the rocking and creaking of that old swing. I could hear them whispering and mama would sometimes giggle. They were deeply in love. This was their special time of the day and I know that he continued to return to that old swing each evening because it brought mama back to him, if only for a brief moment. I longed sometimes to join my daddy on that old swing, but I was afraid I might disturb mama’s ghost.

I wanted to give up that year, just lay down and die like mama did. Nothing seemed to matter much anymore with mama gone, not even the education I so badly wanted. I know you’ll think I’m crazy, but I could hear mama speaking to me from the grave from time to time. ‘Be strong, Claudette, don’t give up…keep your life on course, keep going and go after what you want…be strong, Claudette.’ There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t think of mama’s last words to me. She said, ‘Claudette, you’re a very young woman and you still got a lot of life to live before you finish its journey. There will be many things in your life that will come to test and try you. They will pull the stuffin’s right out of you and show you what you’re really made of. Most times you won’t like what you see, but there ain’t nothin’ in this life that can’t be mended or repaired or somehow be dealt with and put back together again. It’s all in how you accept it and then what you do to deal with it. Strong winds come and they bend you down like trees in a storm, but if you are rooted with love and compassion in your heart, you’ll only bend and not break.’ Those words would not only take me through a lifetime of crisis, but become a hard, cold, gripping reality as well.

THREE

Marianne and I met when I was six years old and she was eight. She lived in Huntsville, Alabama, but her grandma and grandpa had a farm about a mile from ours. Our families knew each other and she would come to stay with her grandparents for about six weeks each summer. We became the best of friends, like two peas in a pod, my daddy used to say. We spent the summers growing up together and doing the usual things two girls on a farm would do for fun, such as driving the mules in the tobacco drags, and pretending we were racing chariots or riding sticks while fantasizing we were on wild prairie ponies. When it was too hot we would swim in the pond or make sugar cookies and lemonade. Late in the afternoons we would pick wild flowers and when it got dark we would catch lighting bugs in jars and wonder where their electricity came from. Our favorite event occurred a few years later when we were old enough and allowed to ride our bikes down to Kelly’s General Store. We were loaded with plenty of spending cash: nickels, dimes and quarters that we had earned doing chores that week. We would take a small paper bag from Mr. Kelly’s counter and fill it to the brim with Mary Janes, Tootsie Rolls, jaw breakers and Atomic Fireballs and about a dozen or so Hershey’s Kisses for pizzazz. We called them silver bells back then. We had another reason why we liked to visit Kelly’s on Friday afternoons. His was the only general store in the area and all the locals from miles around did their shopping there. Everybody knew that Kelly’s was the best place to catch up on the latest local gossip. We loved to eavesdrop on the store patrons and then we would stay up most of the night snickering and giggling as we mimicked all the gossip we had heard that day. As we grew older we outgrew the mule drags and sticks and finally learned in school how the